


Alternates

by viverella



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-10-04
Updated: 2014-04-19
Packaged: 2017-12-28 08:37:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 14,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/989970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/viverella/pseuds/viverella
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"And I'd choose you; in a hundred lifetimes, in a hundred worlds, in any version of reality, I'd find you and I'd choose you. <br/><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/919207-and-i-d-choose-you-in-a-hundred-lifetimes-in-a">― Kiersten White, The Chaos of Stars</a></i>
</p><p> </p><p>According to some, there are a million, million possible universes out there, and in each universe exists a you-that-could-have-been, a life-you-could-have-had, a reality-that-could-be-real. And in this realm of everything that exists and everything that could have existed, a million, million different versions of the crew of the Enterprise exists, filling in different roles, living different lives. Yet in each version of their lives, one way or another, they somehow always find their ways back to one another.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Canon.

**Author's Note:**

> so y'all know [that one post that's been circulating around tumblr about that AU tv show idea](http://urfbownd.tumblr.com/post/58535671729/there-should-be-a-show-just-called-au-every) wherein every episode is the same cast of characters is dropped into a different alternate universe? I saw that post and I just thought oh hell, this needs to be done. so here we are! (probably mostly mckirk) ficlets! alternate universes! excitement!

The universe, Leonard thinks bitterly, is probably out to get him. 

He was just thinking, not more than an hour ago, that it’s been a remarkably long time since he’s had to seriously bandage anyone up. Sure, there’s been the occasional accident over in engineering and someone will come in with some cuts and scrapes, but it’s all minor, non-life-threatening stuff. He hasn’t had to deal with anything terribly serious in a long time – as evinced by the cheery Days Since Jim Last Almost Died sign on his office wall that Nurse Chapel got him for his birthday, which is sporting a bright, shiny twenty-nine today. Leonard had been hoping that they’d actually make it to a month before Jim went out and did something stupid again, because really, on a five-year exploration mission in deep space, that shouldn’t be too much to ask for, right? 

After knowing Jim for so many years, though, Leonard knows that he probably should have known better (but hey, optimism, right?).

Leonard’s comm pings shortly after lunch, and part of him doesn’t even consider the possibility that it could be Jim, because the landing party only _just_ beamed down to the surface of that planet they stumbled upon (and anyway, they couldn’t detect any signs of intelligent life, so how much trouble could Jim get himself into on a planet of mostly just plants?). But sure enough, when Leonard answers, Jim’s voice comes through, and Leonard hopes against all hope that this is just one of Jim’s random _hey I just thought of this cool thing and wow, Bones, you just have to know it right now_ calls.

“Bones!” Jim chirps, sounding cheerier than ever, and Leonard groans, because he knows Jim’s _I just fucked something up, Bones, come fix things pretty please_ voice when he hears it.

“What do you want, Jim?” Leonard grumbles, already getting up from his desk to get his staff ready to receive what he assumes is going to be the entire landing party – Jim, Carol, Spock, a few ensigns, the lot of them. 

“I’ll be seeing you in medical soon,” Jim says in sing-song, though Leonard thinks he can hear a certain labored quality to Jim’s breathing. 

“Great,” Leonard sighs, snapping his communicator shut. 

No more than a minute later, the medbay doors slide open, revealing a battered Jim sporting what appear to be burns. He’s got one arm securely around Carol’s waist, half supporting her and half letting her support him, the two of them limping over on legs covered in welts and angrily red skin as the others spill into medbay behind them. This was a couple of the ensigns’ first landing party experience, and Leonard frowns as Spock carefully hands them off to the medbay staff, sorry that this was their first taste of exploration. 

Leonard shakes his head and, seeing that everyone else is being attended to already, rushes over to Jim, making as if to help Jim over to a bed so he can properly assess the damage, but Jim stops him and nods towards Carol. 

“Take care of her first. Make sure everyone’s okay,” Jim says, his voice serious in a way that means he won’t budge if Leonard tries to fight him on this. “I’m fine.”

Leonard presses his lips together unhappily, but moves to take Carol’s weight off of Jim, at the same time motioning for Nurse Chapel to come take care of Jim. 

“You have to let Bones treat me,” Jim insists, agitated but allowing Nurse Chapel to support his weight. “I’m fine, okay? And Bones will be quick, so just let me wait till he’s done with Carol.”

And even though Leonard knows it’s unnecessary because Nurse Chapel is his best and knows better than any other member of his medical staff not to put up with Jim’s bullshit, especially when his health is in question, Leonard still says firmly to her, “Don’t you dare listen to a word he says. Start treating his burns immediately or so help me, I will personally make sure that you have to find a different ship to work on by morning.”

And she smiles a smile that tells him what he already knew, that he didn’t even have to ask. Leonard lets out a breath of relief as Jim lets her lead him away, albeit reluctantly, and Leonard turns his attention to treating Carol. He sits her down and scans her with tricorder, his eyebrows shooting up to his hairline at the readings. 

“Chemical burns?” Leonard reads in surprise. He sets his tricorder aside and grabs his regenerator. “What the hell did you guys get yourself into?”

He hands her a smock so she can change out of her ruined clothes, raising the privacy screen and averting his eyes politely as she changes. 

“Well, we thought it was going to be a relatively safe expedition, seeing as how this planet seems to be in its early stages of development,” Carol explains, slipping out of her uniform and into the smock. “I mean, that’s why I wanted to go in the first place; early planetary evolution is absolutely fascinating. But anyways, we stumbled upon these plants that sort of resemble Venus flytraps, except that they secrete some sort of corrosive, acid-based fluid as a method of capturing prey. It’s a wonder they don’t corrode themselves, really, seeing as how the secretions are so caustic.”

Leonard’s eyebrows still haven’t settled back into their resting position as he runs the regenerator over her burned skin. 

“What’d you do, attack the plants or something?” he quips.

Carol laughs, her nose crinkling prettily. “I’m afraid it was my fault,” she admits, smiling in a way that would almost look ashamed if she didn’t look so damn proud of herself. “I tried to take a sample and I must have triggered some sort of defensive mechanism. I probably should’ve been a bit more cautious.

“You should talk to Mr. Sulu about that,” Leonard says. Under his hands, Carol’s skin is healing nicely, fading from a livid red to the soft pink of new skin. “He loves things like that.”

Carol smiles as Leonard moves to work on repairing the skin on her back. “Maybe I will,” she says. 

An amiable silence surrounds them as Leonard finishes fixing her up, and when he’s done, Leonard tells her that he’ll get someone to bring her a new uniform since hers was ruined, and she smiles and thanks him. 

“You should probably check on Kirk,” Carol suggests. “He got the worst of it. He sort of, um, threw himself in front of me.” She pauses and then smiles tentatively, “He’s a very brave man, your Jim. He’s very kind.”

Leonard grins. “Yeah,” he says, ducking out to go check on Jim. “That’s why he gets to sit in the chair.”

Leonard hears Carol laugh behind him and heads on over to where Nurse Chapel is working on repairing Jim’s burned tissue and by the looks of it, Jim’s wounds are indeed worse than Carol’s, just as she said. Leonard steps in and works with Nurse Chapel on repairing the worst of the damage before he tells her to check on the other patients and make sure that someone gets everyone new uniforms to wear. She nods and walks off briskly, all efficiency and quick grace as she goes to check on everyone else. 

Leonard sighs and shakes his head as he examines the remaining damage. It’s mostly skin damage now, red and raw and still a little blistered. Jim flinches as Leonard runs his thumb gingerly over Jim’s burned skin.

“Ow,” Jim complains, but it’s half-hearted and mostly joking. “Careful there, Bones. I’m not quite fixed yet.”

Leonard huffs out a tired laugh. “Yeah, well no one asked you to go around and play hero all the time,” he retorts, which makes Jim smile a little, one of those rare, soft smiles that remind Leonard of how painfully young Jim is to bear so much on his shoulders. 

Jim is quiet for a moment, and when Leonard looks up, he can see that look in Jim’s eyes, that specific set to his shoulders that screams _what else am I supposed to do?_ And Leonard gets it, he does, the way that Jim feels personally responsible for everyone on this ship, because after everything they’ve all been through together, they’re somehow more than just a crew; they’re a family. But at the same time, Leonard wishes that Jim would at least be a little more careful, because every time Jim beams down to the surface of some unknown planet without Leonard by his side, he feels something anxious and sickening clench in his gut, like he’s not sure he’ll ever see Jim alive again. 

“I just wish you would’ve made it to at least a month this time without getting yourself caught up in some mess,” Leonard says, trying for cheerful and halfway succeeding.  
Jim frowns at Leonard. “It’s been a month.”

“Not quite,” Leonard grumbles, finishing up on Jim’s shoulders, the skin now smooth and new except for the faint scars from Jim’s childhood that they don’t talk about. 

Jim peeks over his shoulder at Leonard with a smirk that Leonard hates and loves. “Why Bones, have you been counting the days?” Jim teases, which earns him a smack. 

“Chapel got me the sign for my birthday, okay?” Leonard dodges, turning to focus on regenerating the skin on Jim’s legs instead of meeting his eyes again.

“But you’ve been using it,” Jim points out, and his mouth is still pulled up into that stupid smirk. 

“Nothing gets past you, Jim.”

Jim laughs, but there’s something sincere about it now. “Hey,” Jim says after a beat. He nudges Leonard with his knee, even though he knows better than to move too much when Leonard’s trying to regenerate his skin. Leonard sighs and looks up, finding Jim smiling a little sadly at him, a little more vulnerable than he lets anyone else see. “I don’t mean to make you worry so much. I just… I want to take care of everyone, you know? They’re my crew; they’re my responsibility.”

“I know,” Leonard says, getting back to work. “Just be careful, okay? I can’t bring you back to life every time you go and get yourself killed.”

And Leonard means for it to come off as a joke, for it to be half-serious and lighthearted, but it comes off as a little bit sad instead. Jim, of course, notices, because he notices everything, because he knows Leonard too well for Leonard to be able to hide anything from him now, and he nudges Leonard again, disrupting his work. 

“What, Jim?” Leonard sighs, exasperated. “I’m trying to fix you here, in case you didn’t realize.”

But Jim doesn’t let Leonard finish and keeps nudging him until he looks up again, and Jim’s face is soft around the edges, his captain’s mask completely fallen away to warm sincerity. And this is Jim underneath it all, this is who Leonard loves so much, the soft, sweet man who hides his quiet spots behind a veneer of wide smiles and bravado. 

“I’m sorry,” Jim says, his voice gentle and kind and just for Leonard. “I’m trying. I’m sorry.”

Leonard smiles and leans over to press his lips to the back of Jim’s hand and gets back to work.

“I know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay, so I have a pretty good idea of the alternate universes I want to do, and ideally, I'd love love love to keep this going for a while because I'm just getting back in the swing of writing fic again after a year's hiatus and w o w it is _hard_ , so writing these little ficlets is really helping me, though I gotta say I'm nervous as hell about posting fic again because wow I don't even know if I'm good at this anymore (what is pacing? what is characterization?). anyways, I have some ideas of what alternate universes I want to do (including all the classics, y'know, like high school au, college/uni au, coffee shop, etc.) but if y'all have any ideas please let me know in the comments!


	2. University.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Jim is a nude figure model in Bones' senior studio class.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aw yis, here it is, my favorite college/university au trope - the nude art model. I'm a little nervous about this one because I've never written from Jim's point of view before, but, well, there's a first time for everything, right? I just hope I've done an acceptable job getting his voice right /hides

Jim thinks he’s got it pretty good as far as jobs on campus go. Instead of spending several hours of his day sitting in some boring library or toiling away making increasingly ridiculous and elaborate coffees at the student-run coffeehouse, he gets to sit in a room for a few classes a week as a figure model for some of the university’s figure drawing classes and let his mind wander to whatever he likes while people draw him. Each studio session is about three hours long each class meets two times a week. One class he’s modeling for right now is an introductory drawing class of about twenty students in which there are several freshmen who snickered uncomfortably for the first week that Jim stepped up onto the little platform they’ve got set up for him and stripped, arranging himself amongst the various pillows and blankets they have set up for him. 

The other class right now, his favorite of the two, is an advanced class, a senior class, and it’s smaller, only seven or eight people sitting in a circle around him. Jim isn’t sure why a bunch of senior art majors are still taking a figure drawing classes, but he goes along with it because they’re incredible and Jim isn’t terribly shy about admitting that he’s a little bit vain and it’s amazing to walk around during breaks and see the things they’ve done. Jim’s not really artistic, not really – all he can really manage is aimless doodles in boring classes – but he has a healthy appreciation for beautiful things, and everything the seniors in this class create, no matter how simple they might be, is nothing short of beautiful. 

He’s been modeling for this class for a few weeks now, and even so, he’s astounded every day by the incredible skill each of the seniors possess. He knows that he’s due to switch to a different class soon, as the professors like switching up the models every few weeks so their students can study a variety of different body types, but he’s grown a little bit attached to his Tuesday/Thursday senior studio class. He’s gotten close to a few of them, and he likes chatting with them between poses. And he doesn’t really like to admit it, but when this class switches models and he’s assigned to a different class, he’s probably going to miss this. 

There’s this one student, Leonard, that Jim has taken a particular interest in, because there’s something about him that’s fascinating and hard to pin down, because when he draws, he furrows his eyebrows and sticks out his lower lip, his blackened fingers deftly smudging charcoal into the proper shapes over paper. Because Jim’s kind of an asshole, he calls Leonard Bones even though that annoys him because on the first day, when Jim had been walking around and peeking at the various drawings of him, the professor had commented on Leonard’s incredible rendering of Jim’s bone structure, and Jim, who’d been walking by, clapped an overly familiar hand on Leonard’s shoulder and grinned, “Nice work, Bones.” Leonard’s friend, Uhura, the sharp-eyed girl who always draws with clean, crisp lines, had laughed and the name sort of stuck, much to Leonard’s chagrin. 

“Afternoon, Jim,” Uhura grins as she breezes into the studio not too long after Jim arrives for his second to last session modeling for this class. 

It’s a Tuesday and he’s had a god-awful day. He’s sleep-deprived and he had two exams today in econometrics and art history (and really, whoever said being a humanities and social science major was easy clearly had no idea what they were talking about, because Jim is downright _exhausted_ ). It’s such a huge relief that all of that’s behind him and he’s here now and he can finally stop thinking for a few hours and just decompress. Jim smiles a hello to Uhura as she goes to pick out a spot to sit today and set up her things. A couple other students trickle in and smile politely to Jim as they set up their stations, leaving the space beside Uhura empty for Leonard, who arrives a couple minutes later. 

“Hey, Leo,” Uhura says, smiling at him as he walks in.

“Afternoon, sweetheart,” Leonard says, setting down his bag. 

“Hey, Bones,” Jim parrots. He considers batting his eyes just to be obnoxious but ends up deciding against it because contrary to popular belief, he actually doesn’t like pissing off people he likes all the time. 

Leonard pins Jim with a look that’s trying to come off as unamused but winds up looking strangely fond instead. “Thanks, Jim,” Leonard says, the words slipping out of the corner of his mouth as he sets up his things. 

Jim grins. They have a strange relationship, him and Leonard. Jim can never quite pin down where they stand, what their relationship exactly _is_ , because on one hand, Leonard keeps scowling and side-eyeing Jim, but on the other hand, he lets Jim greet him every day, lets Jim hover over his shoulder and peer at his work, lets Jim poke at him and tease him and even flirt with him on occasion. And Leonard is never really mean, not really, not from the heart. He’s grumpy and reluctant most of the time, but sometimes, sometimes Jim catches Leonard smiling at his jokes out of the corner of his eye.

The professor waltzes in some minutes later and claps his hands and tells everyone that today they’re going to be working with light and shadow. He drags over a couple of the spotlights from the corner of the room and positions them around the modeling platform as Jim strips and gets into position. He catches Leonard’s eye as he’s settling down and throws him a wink, which earns Jim an exasperated eye roll, before Jim tilts his head upwards, extending the length of his neck, and rests his hands behind his back, catching his weight on his outstretched palms. He vaguely hears Uhura whisper something to Leonard as the scratching of charcoal starts up as everyone begins their warm up sketches, and Leonard says something undecipherable in a low rumble back, something that makes Uhura laugh as she gets to work blocking out the shapes of Jim’s body. 

Jim goes through five warm up poses for five minutes each before settling into a couple thirty minute poses, stretching out on the blankets and pillows and contorting his body into interesting shapes for them to capture. They take a break after that to let Jim rest his muscles, and Jim slips on a thin robe and wanders around the room, the concrete floors of the studio cool against his bare feet. There’s a soft, quiet chatter about the room as the students murmur amongst themselves and the professor roams around and offers critiques. Jim takes a moment to peek over Leonard’s shoulder, recognizing the curve of his own knee and calf cutting through the paper. Like always, Leonard’s drawing has a sense of smoothness about it, like the charcoal isn’t just charcoal but something softer, something more like velvet, the rich blacks fading easily into pale greys and whites. 

“Nice job,” Jim murmurs in Leonard’s ear.

Leonard whips his head around, his eyebrow jumping up to his hairline in a truly characteristic way. He hesitates for a moment like he’s not sure if Jim’s being sincere or if he’s just fooling around. 

“Thanks,” Leonard finally settles on saying, the corner of his mouth twitching like he wants to smile. 

Jim grins as he slips back over to the modeling platform, disrobing as the professor announces that they’ll be doing another pose for the remainder of the class. They’ll take a quick break forty-five minutes in, the professor tells the class as Jim gets into position, going into a sort of crouching position, one leg bent behind him and the other knee up in front of him, his fingertips resting gingerly on the ground as if he’s coiling his body up to spring. The familiar, comforting scratching of charcoal against paper starts up again, and Jim sneaks a peek over at Leonard, even though technically he’s not supposed to watch any of the students, for fear that it might make them self-conscious and hamper their artistic abilities. But Jim can’t help it; Leonard’s just so fascinating to watch when he draws, brow furrowed in concentration as those large, capable hands carefully switch between sketching in light details with vine charcoal and smudging in the deep, rich blacks of compressed charcoal, callused artist’s fingertips brushing brilliant values into place. 

When Jim rests forty-five minutes into the pose and stretches the kinks out of his neck, stiff from holding one position for so long, he hears the professor commenting on Leonard’s exquisite use of negative space and catches Leonard’s eye for a moment before Leonard hastily looks away. As Jim assumes his pose again, he thinks about Leonard’s strange sometimes-there, sometimes-not responsiveness to his actions and he thinks back to that first day he met Leonard, his first day modeling for this class. He thinks about how he’d half-jokingly asked Leonard out for drinks later and the startled look on Leonard’s face that had quickly faded away to playfulness and the teasing, “Why don’t you try again a few weeks from now?” because apparently Leonard has a thing against doing anything that isn’t strictly professional with any of his models. Jim wonders if, now that his time modeling for this class is almost over, he’d get a different answer. 

By the time class ends, Jim has resolved on trying again, because Leonard has never rebuffed him, not entirely, and Jim only has one more class anyways. He lingers behind as the students in the class pack up their things and leave one by one, eager to get home. Uhura rushes off, hurrying to meet her boyfriend because it’s their anniversary today and they have plans for the evening, and she presses her mouth lightly to Leonard’s cheek before dashing out, calling goodbye to Jim over her shoulder. The professor leaves soon as well with a nod to Jim, who’s making a show of slowly gathering up his things, and Leonard, who always likes to stay behind for a few minutes to stare at his latest work, most likely self critiquing and cataloging everything he could’ve done better. 

When Jim is sure that everyone else is gone, he goes over to Leonard’s worktable and leans over the edge of it, taking a peek at the sketchpad that’s been facing away from him all this time. It’s beautiful, framing Jim as a creature ready to strike, almost sinister and dangerous, the stark contrast in values highlighting bumps and ridges in Jim’s body that he didn’t even know existed. Jim is so astounded by Leonard’s work (he always is, always, even though he’s seen Leonard’s drawings of him every week for several weeks now) that he doesn’t notice Leonard staring at him for a long moment, and when Jim meets Leonard’s eyes, he finds that Leonard’s got this look in his eye that’s similar to the way he looks when he’s studying a drawing before offering up a critique. 

“It’s very good,” Jim offers for lack of anything better to say, gesturing to the drawing. 

Leonard’s mouth twitches like it does so often. “Thank you.”

He moves suddenly then, reaching out and picking up his sketchpad, carefully flipping it shut, carefully trying not to smudge his precious drawings. Leonard moves to put away his supplies, blackened fingers carefully plucking pieces of charcoal off of his worktable and slipping them back into their boxes. 

“Do you remember what I asked you a few weeks ago?” Jim casually asks as Leonard puts his supplies away on the supply shelf and goes to wash the charcoal from his hands. 

Leonard hums.

“You said you’d reconsider,” Jim reminds him. 

Leonard dries off his hands and gives him a look, clearly trying to fight off a teasing smile. 

“What do you say now?” Jim asks, smiling in a way that he knows gets under people’s skin and makes them melt from the inside out. “I don’t have plans tonight, and I expect you don’t either.”

Leonard’s mouth curves up into a true smile now, crooked and amused and ever so slightly sarcastic, probably at how presumptuous Jim is being, and Jim almost believes that Leonard is going to agree, just for a moment. 

“Why don’t you ask me on Thursday, Jim?” Leonard says instead, gathering up his things and slinging his bag over his shoulder. He grins and says over his shoulder as he leaves, “Good evening, Jim.”

He starts heading out the door, and Jim feels something clench inside his chest, something exciting and exhilarating, because that’s not a yes, but it’s not a no either. More than likely, it’s Leonard’s way of saying that his own sense of professional duty is the only thing standing in the way of a more positive answer. 

“Bones!” Jim calls suddenly after Leonard’s retreating back, wanting that yes, wanting Leonard to stay, wanting what Leonard is promising him right now, right this instant, because he doesn’t want to wait anymore.

Leonard pauses and looks back over his shoulder at Jim, sighing. “Yes, Jim?”

Jim hesitates, wondering what he was planning on saying, because now that Leonard is looking at him again, anything he might have said to persuade him to stay is caught in his throat. He ends up floundering stupidly for a moment before he settles on a smile, something quieter and less flirtatious than usual. 

“See you on Thursday,” Jim says eventually.

Leonard nods, just slightly, amused eyes appraising Jim in a rare show of warmth. “Yeah.”


	3. Wartime.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Bones is a doctor in a war zone and Jim shows up on his operating table.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so this is ostensibly set during WWII, and I've tried to do a bit of research into like medical technology of the time but I've only done a very cursory job at that and can't guarantee any accuracies, so I'm sorry if I offend anyone's historical sensibilities with any inaccuracies. also sorry it's been so long since the last update! my boyfriend was visiting me for a week and then I had a horrible week of midterms and essays, so I've had little time to write in the past couple weeks. I've come up with some exciting ideas for the ficlets to come, though, so get excited!

When Leonard dreamed of becoming a doctor as a child, he hadn’t imagined that he’d wind up being a doctor in a war zone somewhere in the middle of Europe with soldiers dying every day around him. Not that he doesn’t love what he does, because he does, he loves healing people, _fixing_ people, but these days, he’s often losing more patients than he’s saving and that gets to you after a while. He’s only just thirty himself, still young and unmarried, and yet many of the men dying in front of him every day are even younger than him. Leonard can’t even count anymore how many people have died on his operating table, how many young, bright-eyed kids who haven’t even seen enough of the world to really know what they’ll be missing out on. 

It’s a day like any other when another patient is brought in, a kid again this time, a boy who really can’t be over eighteen, who’s got his leg blown wide open and is quickly bleeding out. The kid looks scared, so, so scared, and his face is ghastly pale and he’s gasping in pain and desperation and fear. 

“Hey,” Leonard says, getting out his tools and motioning for the nurses to ready the ether for anesthesia. “Hey, kid. It’s going to be okay, alright? I’ve got you. I’m going to fix you up, okay?”

The kid groans in pain, his face screwed up in agony. Leonard bends over him and tries to keep him awake.

“Hey, kid, look at me,” Leonard says, trying to think of something, anything to keep the boy conscious because he’s afraid that if he lets the kid pass out, he’ll lose him for good. “What’s your name, huh? What can I call you?”

“Chekov,” the kid says, his voice slurred from torment. “Private Pavel Chekov, sir.”

“Alright, Chekov,” Leonard says as the nurse begin to administer the anesthetic. “You’re going to be okay, you hear me? Just stay with me, okay?”

Chekov nods, the tension from his body releasing slightly as the ether the nurse is giving him begins to do its work. Leonard is relieved the the nurse, Miss Chapel, keeps on talking to Chekov as he gets to work, because it’s distracting the kid from the pain he’s in and gives Leonard space to think, to focus on the problem in front of him without having to worry about whether Chekov is going to give out on him or not. 

The damage itself isn’t too bad, Leonard thinks as he examines Chekov’s leg and begins picking shrapnel out of his flesh. It’s certainly not the worst he’s seen, and he even thinks that he might be able to save Chekov’s leg, may be able to contain the damage and if it doesn’t get infected, Chekov might even be able to stand and walk again. Leonard takes a deep breath and picks out as much debris as he can, deft fingers carefully handling the damaged tissue, trying not to make it worse than it is. Leonard’s able to get all the shrapnel out of Chekov’s leg and stop the bleeding in time, cauterizing the wound to prevent him from bleeding out entirely. He thinks as he stitches up Chekov’s leg that the kid may never have full use of his leg back. The damage has already been done to his muscles and nerves, and even if he’s able to walk again, he’ll be using a cane and most likely limping before even turning twenty, and Leonard feels something clench in his chest at the injustice of it all.

“Hey,” Leonard says to Chekov once his leg is stitched up. “Hey, kid, you’re all patched up. You’re going to be okay now.”

Chekov looks up at him with pain-weary eyes, but Leonard can see something warm and grateful in his expression. Leonard smiles and asks Miss Chapel to go move Chekov to one of the recovery wards, but as he’s walking away to go scrub down and see if there’s anyone else who’s come in needing intensive care, Chekov grabs his wrist, a suddenly panicked expression coming over his face. 

“Kirk,” Chekov rasps, his voice rough and tired. “My sergeant. He was— He was hit— Worse than me.”

“I’ll check on him,” Leonard promises Chekov, even though he has the sinking feeling in his gut that Chekov’s sergeant probably won’t be quite as lucky as him. But his response seems to reassure Chekov, because his face relaxes and he releases Leonard’s wrist, letting Miss Chapel take him away. 

Leonard hurriedly throws off his smock and peels off his gloves, stained with Chekov’s blood, and quickly scrubs his hands clean before finding a new smock to wear. He quickly finds where this Kirk character is being operated on, several people hovering over him as they try to contain the damage of his wound. Leonard cringes internally at the sight he sees before him, because while he’s not typically squeamish around the sight of blood and injuries (he _is_ a war doctor after all), this is probably one of the worst injuries he’s seen so far. Kirk’s legs are almost entirely gone and he’s got numerous other gaping wounds all over his body and there’s blood everywhere, and Leonard thinks it’s a wonder that Kirk is still alive at all, because he can tell that the life is very quickly draining out of him. 

Leonard shoves his way over and grabs some surgical tools and starts helping the other doctors try to save this man, because even battered as he is, Leonard can tell that this Kirk is young, younger than him, and Leonard hopes, desperately, against all logic, that this guy will have many more years to live out. Leonard frantically starts picking debris out of his cuts, doing his best to staunch the bleeding and patch up the wounds as quickly as he can. Kirk’s eyes are closed, his face pinched in pain and fear, and Leonard can tell even as he fixes Kirk up as best he can that Kirk is slipping away right in front of his eyes and there’s most likely little they can do to stop it. 

“Hey,” Leonard says as he continues to work, trying to keep his voice as normal and optimistic, thinking that maybe even though this man has to die, he doesn’t have to die alone and afraid. “Kirk, hey.”

Kirk cracks his eyes open, his brow wrinkled in the late stages of agony, and Leonard is momentarily floored by the striking blue he’s confronted with. Even dirtied and beat up and so near death, this man is quite beautiful, and Leonard can’t help thinking that if they’d met under different circumstances, if they’d been born in a different time, been in a different place, where war wasn’t tearing the entire world apart, Leonard thinks that maybe he’d like to get to know this man a little bit better. 

Leonard smiles. “Hey,” he says encouragingly, trying to keep Kirk distracted. 

Kirk makes a face that looks like he’d be smiling if he weren’t in so much pain. “My men,” Kirk rasps. “My men… Are they…?”

“They’re fine,” Leonard assures him, even though he’s really only seen Chekov and doesn’t even know who’s under Kirk’s command, but it softens Kirk’s expression, so Leonard considers it worth it.

Kirk laughs, and it’s bitter and broken and more like a choked cough than anything else, and Leonard can see that he’s losing Kirk.

“I’m going to die, aren’t I?” Kirk says, his voice barely more than a whisper. 

“We’re going to save you,” Leonard insists, keeping his voice level and hopeful despite the fact that Leonard is quite sure that there’s not much anyone can do at this point. “We’re going to save you. You’re going to be okay.”

Kirk’s mouth curves up a little, and Leonard can tell that Kirk doesn’t believe him, that Kirk knows he’s lying but goes along with it anyways, because it’s nice to think that in your dying moments, someone cares about you when you feel like no one does. 

“Thanks,” Kirk says, mouthing the word more than anything, and Leonard can tangibly _see_ the moment the life leaves him, the moment those bright blue eyes fall blank and the muscles in his face relax as he stops fighting and lets go. And maybe it’s because Leonard has never been this physically close to anyone at the moment of death before, maybe it’s because most of his patients are already dead upon arrival or die quietly overnight, but something in Leonard’s chest seizes violently.

“No,” Leonard scrambles frantically, applying rhythmic compressions to Kirk’s chest even though he knows it’s too late, knows it at the very core of his being that Kirk can’t be saved. “No, oh god, no, no, no.”

“McCoy,” one of the other doctors says to him, gently easing him away from Kirk. “He’s gone.”

And Leonard knows that, he does, it’s just that he’s been here for months and months already, and it sometimes feels like all he does is watch people die, and he’s tired, he’s so, so tired. Someone pats him on the back and tells him to get some rest, that he’s done above and beyond what’s expected of him already. Leonard nods numbly and scrubs down and ditches his bloodied smock, feeling hollowed out and empty inside. 

As Leonard walks back through the sick bay to check on his patients currently in recovery, he catches Chekov’s eye without meaning to, and the defeat must show in his expression, because Chekov’s expression falls apart, and Leonard can’t think of a single thing to say.


	4. Band.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Jim and Bones are in a band with Uhura and Carol, and things get weird and feelings happen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay I am actually _the worst_ at updating on a regular basis. I'm sorry guys this one was just weirdly difficult for me to write for some reason. but anyway, here it is, in all it's beautiful, struggle-tastic glory!

Leo can still clearly remember being fourteen and his best friend slinging a casual arm over his shoulder and deciding for the two of them that they should start a band, and he still remembers not quite imagining that anything would actually come of it. He remembers agreeing anyway, half because he liked playing guitar and fucking around and pretending like they could be something, and half because even at fourteen, he had enough figured out to realize that he’d do anything to make Jim smile. He remembers meeting the girls some months later and then being sixteen and their first gig and the adrenaline rush afterwards and Carol pressing her mouth to his out of sheer excitement, and he remembers thinking _it doesn’t get better than this_. 

Only now, Leo thinks as he gazes out through the bright stage lights into the huge crowd that has amassed in this stadium just for them, he can definitively say that sixteen year old Leo didn’t know shit, because they’re right on the precipice of becoming something incredible, selling out huge stadiums and finally, _finally_ getting that recognition they’ve worked so hard and so long for, and this, _this_ is the dream. 

Next to him, Nyota is belting out an impossibly high note in her crisp, clear soprano, beautiful and thrilling in a way that Leo can still only describe as magical. Across the stage, Jim catches Leo’s eye and grins wildly, high on exhilaration and success, and Leo laughs outright, getting swept up, as always, in the ecstasy that performing is. As their set draws to a close, Leo can hear Carol cheering loudly from behind the drums, and as the final notes of their last song ring in through the air, Leo is deafened for a moment by the immense wall of sound that rises from the audience as they scream and cheer and cry out for more music. And as they stumble off stage, drunk off of adrenaline, Leo can feel his nerve ends buzzing, and he remembers in the early days how Carol would sometimes pull him aside and shove him into an out of the way corner and press her mouth to his, all teeth and tongue and overeagerness, all _please, please, I just need this, I just need this right now_. Leo had liked that, while it lasted, because it was casual and exciting and Carol’s mouth tasted like mint and sweet tea and sometimes he’d needed that. And that had been that for quite some time – simple, easy – until one day out of the blue, Carol had called it off, even though what they had would never have been anything serious or real anyways, because as much as he loves Carol, when he thinks about who he’ll be with when he’s old and tired, it’s never her. 

When he’d asked her why, because he was curious, because it was so sudden, she just shrugged and replied cryptically, “You want more than this, Leo; I know you. But this” – she’d gestured between the two of them – “is pretty much all I want at the moment, and I like you too much to risk hurting you. So I’m letting you go.” Then she’d raised an eyebrow and added, almost as an afterthought, “No offense.”

That had been that, and okay, maybe Leo has always been more the relationship type, but he hadn’t quite understood what Carol was talking about until several months later, after a big show, Jim threw an arm over his shoulder, stumbling drunkenly into his side and murmuring slurred promises into his ear, and Leo had felt something shivery and thrilling shoot up his spine, so different and _more_ than when he’d been with Carol or anyone else, and Leo had thought _oh_ and silently cursed Carol for being so goddamn perceptive (because okay, maybe Leo has always been drawn to Jim, maybe Leo has been denying to himself all this time the fact that he’s been a little bit attracted to him for quite a few years now).

Leo supposes he’d expected Jim to come onto him after Carol “let him go,” to try to seduce him the way Jim seduces everyone, with wide smiles and smooth words, because Jim is observant if nothing else and he’d notice when Leo stopped sleeping with Carol. But instead of trying to get in his pants, Jim just insinuates himself into Leo’s space like he always has, only more so now, finding every excuse to touch him, careful, warm fingers pressing into the small of his back, his shoulder, his arm. Jim’s mouth brushes by his ear, murmuring secret observations and comments when they’re prepping for a show, and all too often, Jim finds excuses to pass out in Leo’s bed after a long night out. And it’s like Jim is trying to seduce him and he’s not at the same time. Because while he isn’t using any of his usual tricks to win Leo over, he’s effectively doing the same thing, crawling slowly into Leo’s space so much that he leaves behind a Jim-shaped hole in Leo’s ribcage when he’s not there. 

All this rushes through Leo’s mind as he stumbles off stage and is nearly tackled in a hug from Jim, who’s crushing his ribs and laughing and cheering about what a great show that was and couldn’t Leo just _feel_ how great they were tonight? Leo laughs and agrees with Jim, if only to see that beaming, proud smile on his face, and he wonders if it’s a little sad that after all these years one of the biggest factors in his decision making process is still _will this make Jim happy?_ But then Jim grins widely and claps Leo on the back and lets his hand linger a little longer than usual, and Leo asks if Jim would like to grab drinks later, after they greet some fans, after all this is over and everyone’s gone home and it’s just them. 

Jim scrunches up his nose in what Leo assumes is supposed to be a thoughtful look that just ends up looking silly. “Nah,” Jim says, letting his hand slip from Leo’s shoulder. He shoves his hands in his pockets and looks away, distracted. “I have something that I need to do.”

“Oh,” Leo says, stunned for a moment, because Jim has never passed up an opportunity to get drinks with him before. “Okay.” 

And Jim just flashes him an absent smile before disappearing and Leo lets his shoulders sag, feeling disappointed and at the same time stupid for being disappointed. He sighs and scrubs his face with his hands, suddenly hit by how exhausted he is. He wanders over to where Nyota and Spock, who’s both her boyfriend from high school and their manager, are and chats with them for a while. Nyota’s warm and kind to him, as always, placing a gentle hand on his shoulder like she knows that something has punctured his post-show bubble. Spock regards him with his usual cool indifference, but there’s something softer in his eyes today, and Leo wonders if everyone can tell he’s been shaken, wonders if it’s all that transparent on his face. 

Carol’s off talking to some fans and Leo hangs around for a while and poses for some pictures and talks to Nyota about where they should eat for lunch the next day and Leo almost forgets that he’s upset. He smiles and laughs and thanks fans for being so wonderful, because they are, they really are, and he’s fine, honestly, until he sees out of the corner of his eye a flash of red hair and hears a laugh that he’d know anywhere. He turns his head and he sees Jim with Gaila, one of the tech girls. She’s carrying some equipment in her arms and he’s leaning against a wall, leaning into her, his mouth curling in that characteristically Jim way, and she’s smiling at him in an almost reluctantly fond way, and Leo suddenly feels sick. He excuses himself quietly and retreats, running away, running away back to the hotel they’ve been staying at, running away because he’s never been good at dealing with things. 

He strips down as soon as he gets to his hotel room and jumps into the shower, turning the heat up to scalding, standing under the water until his skin is red and angry from the heat. He falls into bed after throwing on a ratty t-shirt and a pair of boxers, and even though he’s exhausted, both physically and mentally, he can’t seem to sleep. He can’t seem to get comfortable and his skin feels like it’s prickling, and he tosses and turns for something like an hour or two before he hears Jim come in, stumbling and clumsy. When he makes his way over to Leo’s bed like he usually does and makes as if to slip into bed next to Leo like it’s any other night, Leo has to stop him, because Jim smells sweat and alcohol and someone else’s perfume.

“Take a fucking shower,” Leo grumbles, his voice rough half from exhaustion and half from annoyance. 

Jim pauses, and in the dark, his eyes look wide and maybe even a little sad. Leo turns away and pulls the blankets up under his chin, frowning at the darkness of the room as Jim stumbles off towards the bathroom. Leo listens restlessly to the shower running, to the clumsy stumbling of a drunk Jim. Jim wanders out of the bathroom and has enough sense to look around for a pair of boxers before crawling into bed with Leo as if he has a right to be there every night, pressed against Leo’s back, arm thrown over Leo’s waist. Jim’s skin is damp from his shower and he falls asleep in less than a minute, and despite himself, Leo is lulled to sleep by the even sound of Jim’s breathing. 

Leo wakes the next morning still tired and, he realizes quickly as he turns over suddenly in his bed, alone. Jim is nowhere to be found, though the curtains are thrown half-open and Jim’s clothes are spilled out everywhere across the floor in true Jim style. Jim has breezed through this room as he whirls through life and he’s left and Leo doesn’t know why he expected Jim to be here in the morning (he never is, just leaves behind Jim-shaped wrinkles in his sheets). Leo’s about to resign himself to just going back to sleep for a few more hours since they don’t have anywhere to be for a while, but the door opens then, and Jim waltzes in, juggling two cups of coffee and a bag of what smells like bagels. 

“Morning,” Jim grins, as if this is any other day. He hands Leo a cup and sets the bagels down on the nightstand, sitting down on Leo’s bed and sprawling out like he belongs there. 

“Hey,” Leo says, taking a sip of his coffee and wincing when he finds it just too hot. He sets the coffee aside. “You were out late last night,” Leo comments, staring at his hands instead of Jim because that feels easier than dealing with Jim’s piercing blue eyes. 

Jim shrugs and smiles absently over the rim of his cup. “I had something to take care of,” he says vaguely. 

“Yeah, I saw,” Leo says out of the corner of his mouth, doing his best not to sound bitter and failing quite miserably. 

Jim frowns, clearly picking up on Leo’s sour tone. “What are you talking about?” 

And Leo knows he should just say it’s nothing and shut up, because it’s not like he even has a claim on Jim or anything, it’s not like he has any right to be upset. But he _is_ upset and he’s only just woken up and that makes him make stupid decisions, so he says, “I saw you with that tech girl, the redhead.”

Jim laughs, choking out a strange, startled sound. “What – Gaila?” Jim asks, eyes wide. “No, Bones, we’re _friends_. You know that thing her and I had was just a one-time thing. And anyways, I just had to ask her advice on something last night.”

Leo raises a skeptical eyebrow at this. “Advice?” he says, a little bit hurt that Jim felt the need to hide this. “Really? ‘Cause last I checked, I’m your best friend. Why didn’t you just ask me?”

Jim’s face twists into an embarrassed sort of smile and he flops back on Leo’s bed, tucking a hand behind his head and looking away sheepishly. He’s quiet. 

Leo nudges Jim with his foot. “ _Jim_.”

Jim looks over at Leo, and Leo is caught off guard by how apprehensive Jim looks, by that fearful, skittish look in his eye like he’s a trapped animal. Leo frowns. 

“It’s nothing,” Jim evades, looking away again, and Leo can _see_ him caving in on himself. 

Leo can’t think of a single time he’s seen Jim like this, not really anyways – or, well that’s not quite right, is it? There was that one time in high school, junior year, when their history teacher was the school’s token hot teacher, and every time Jim was called on to speak in class, he would suddenly become small and shy like he never was anywhere else. And Leo realizes with a start that oh, _oh_ , so _that’s_ what’s going on here, that’s got to be what Jim is being all coy about.

“Jim, why didn’t you come talk to me about it?” Leo prods again, because Jim is being difficult and Leo’s his best friend, dammit. And sure, something in Leo’s chest is aching in a nasty and vaguely jealous way, but still, why doesn’t Jim trust him to talk to him about this?

“I couldn’t,” Jim mutters, turning away from Leo and tucking his face into his shoulder, trying to guard the pink rising into his cheeks. 

“Wha—?” Leo starts to say and realizes suddenly the implications of what Jim isn’t telling him, the things Jim is saying by avoiding all of his questions. Leo’s heart rattles against his chest and he can’t bring himself to anything but laugh, because of course, _of course_ the two of them would be such idiots. 

Jim frowns at him and snaps, “What?”

Leo shakes his head and yanks Jim up so that he can look him in the eye when he places his hands on Jim’s face and says softly, “You’re an idiot.”

He manages to catch Jim’s startled expression for about half a second before pressing his mouth to Jim’s (and he realizes that this is what he’s wanted for so long now, for years, and now this is finally maybe _his_ ).


	5. Kittens.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Jim and Bones are flatmates and end up accidentally adopting a herd of cats.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> inspired by [one of my favorite x-men: first class fics](http://archiveofourown.org/works/216525) (◡‿◡✿)

Bones is probably one of the better roommates Jim has ever had. It probably helps that they’d been friends all through university, even though they’d never roomed together before now. They hadn’t been very close when they were in school, but when Jim graduated and got a job and realized that housing in San Francisco was a little pricier than he’d been expecting, discovering that Bones was at UCSF for med school had been a blessing. Luckily for Jim, Bones is fairly easy to live with; he’s not terribly messy (except on weeks he has exams, because then he’ll spend all his time studying and just toss things indiscriminately aside when he’s done with them) and he’s pretty accommodating. Jim likes living with him, all in all, and they’ve come to be better much friends, often spending their evenings unwinding by watching shitty TV and drinking beer and laughing late into the night. 

Bones comes home one evening just before dinnertime, and Jim’s preheating the oven so he can heat up a frozen pizza (because hey, Jim never claimed he was a culinary expert or anything). It’s drizzling outside and the typical San Francisco gloom is clogging up the last, weak rays of the setting sun, and Bones stumbles in looking grumpy and damp and exhausted as usual – only today, he’s clutching something gingerly under his coat. 

Jim sticks his head out of the kitchen and raises an eyebrow. Not sure of what to expect because out of the two of them Bones is typically the more responsible, he asks, “What’s that?”

Bones shrugs off his coat and produces what appears to be a kitten. She’s a small, pitiful looking thing, skinny and rain-soaked, but she’s got this tortoiseshell patterning, and even Jim, who’s never been a huge cat person, can tell that once she gets cleaned up, she’ll be quite beautiful. 

“Found her in a box on the sidewalk,” Bones says absently, heading off down the hall. “I’m going to get her cleaned up and then I’m going to run to the store and get some things for her.”

Jim hears the tap running in the bathroom and he settles down on the couch to watch some TV as the pizza cooks, entirely bewildered by this turn of events, because it’s not usually Bones who does things like this. It’s usually Jim who goes out and does stupid shit and brings home strays (though he hasn’t taken such a literal take on it like Bones has). Bones wanders out of the bathroom some minutes later with the kitten bundled up in a towel and he sets her down on the couch next to Jim, mumbling something about needing to get her some food and a collar and needing to make a vet appointment for her. And then he’s slipping his coat on and shoving his feet into his shoes, ready to leave as if Jim knows anything about taking care of a small animal. 

“Wait, Bones,” Jim cries out, making the tiny kitten flinch in surprise. Jim frowns and lowers his voice, “Bones, I have no idea how to take care of a cat. What do I do?”

Bones laughs, his eyes crinkling around the corners. “Just make sure she doesn’t get cold, and if she gets cranky, hold her and pet her a little bit. You’ll be fine,” Bones says, and his voice is soft and amused like Jim never used to hear when they’d first started living together. He calls over his shoulder as he’s walking out, “Her name’s Nyota, by the way.”

Bones comes back half an hour later loaded up with bags full of various things he thinks the kitten is going to need and Jim, who’s cradling Nyota carefully in his lap because she was mewing pathetically and she wouldn’t quiet down until he picked her up. She’s napping in his lap now, pressing her face into the palm of his hand. 

Bones raises an eyebrow at Jim when he sees the two of them, and Jim just narrows his eyes and snaps, “Shut up.”

And just like that, Nyota is officially part of their family, and even though Jim never had any pets growing up and was never a cat person, he supposes it’s nice having her around. Now that she’s cleaned up and well fed and full of the sort of energy that kittens are supposed to have, even Jim has to admit that she’s pretty adorable. 

Except then, three weeks later, Bones brings back another cat he’s found, a sleek, black thing he names Spock who immediately takes a liking to Nyota. And then there’s Hikaru, who always manages to sneak up on Jim when he rounds a corner and almost trips him at least half a dozen times a day, and Carol, who’s regal and fluffy and white, and Chekov, who’s living proof that Bones does indeed have a sense of humor because he’s some sort of Russian blue mix and of course Bones thinks it’s _hilarious_ that he has a Russian name. And the thing is, Jim finds that he doesn’t mind at all, partly because he actually grows quite fond of the cats, but mostly because it makes Bones so happy to take all of them in. 

“I grew up on a farm,” Bones mentions one day and Jim vaguely recalls stories of Bones’ childhood in Georgia, picking peaches and riding horses with his father. “It’s nice having animals around again.”

And so life goes on, and Jim doesn’t think anything of it until one night, his friend Gaila comes over for dinner and drinks. She works in the same building as him for some tech company, and when he’d first met her, she’d been interesting because she smiled like she knew everything about him. Now, she’s still interesting, because she has this way of looking at him like she can see right through him, and Jim can’t figure out how she knows everything about him half a minute before he even says anything to her.

They have dinner and they’re in the living room talking over glasses of wine while the cats roam about and Chekov curls up in his lap, purring when Jim scratches his chin. Bones is still at school when Gaila comes over and doesn’t come home till late, looking tired and haggard and like he hasn’t eaten all day. Carol pads over to him and meows adoringly.

“Hi, sweetheart,” Bones murmurs quietly, picking Carol up in his arms. He glances over at the living room and nods a polite hello to Gaila. 

“You look like shit,” Jim says, which makes the corner of Bones’ mouth curve up into an almost bitter but mostly weary half smile.

“Thanks,” Bones says as he wanders off down the hall to his bedroom to change into something more comfortable. Carol is still purring in his arms.

As soon as Bones is out of sight, Gaila pins Jim with an inquisitive look, eyebrow raised in suspicion. Jim frowns, uncomfortable with being so thoroughly scrutinized. In his lap, Chekov seems to sense his agitation and buts his head against Jim’s hand (or maybe he’s just asking for Jim to start petting him again).

“What?” Jim says defensively. 

Gaila sits back, settling into a more casual position. “You’re awfully fond of him, aren’t you?” she says. 

Something clenches in Jim’s chest. “What do you mean?” Jim says, his voice less sure than usual. He tries for a casual chuckle that ends up sounding too nervous, and Jim kicks himself for sounding so uneasy (and he can’t figure out how to make it go away).

Gaila laughs, her eyes lit with mirth. “What happened to the Jim who’d always been a dog person?” she asks. “You hate cats.”

Jim shifts suddenly, causing Chekov to meow unhappily when Jim jostles him. Chekov slinks off to the corner of the couch and curls up to resume his nap. 

“I don’t hate cats,” Jim protests. 

“Well you don’t love them, and yet, now you’re surrounded by a whole hoard of them day in and day out,” Gaila says. She leans in and pins him with a look that makes him question everything that he is. “So, why did you let him talk you into this?”

Jim opens his mouth to speak and when he can’t seem to find the words, Gaila grins and throws him a wink before getting up and going to get her coat, saying something about needing to sleep early because she has a meeting at eight in the morning. Bones emerges from the hallway just then, looking freshly showered and marginally happier. Gaila calls a quick goodbye to Bones as she slips out, and Jim just stares, dumbfounded. 

Bones heats up some leftover pasta from the night before and settles down on the couch. They end up watching TV surrounded by cats as usually and occasionally knocking knees, and Jim feels warm and comfortable and finds himself wanting to never be anywhere else. The realization startles him, but not as much as he would’ve thought, and he thinks _oh, okay then_ and that’s sort of nice too.


	6. Accident.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Bones and Carol have just begun dating and it's the anniversary of Jim's death.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I AM SO SORRY IT HAS BEEN SO LONG I've just be so unmotivated it's killing me. But here is another update, finally, and I'm so so excited about this one because after mckirk, mcmarcus is one of my absolute favorite ships. They're just so incredibly precious and ugh I just can't.

It’s late in the morning when Leonard wakes. The sun streams in through the windows because he forgot to pull the blinds shut the night before. Carol’s still asleep beside him, face soft in the golden light, and Leonard gets out of bed to make coffee and breakfast for the two of them. The weight of this morning sits awkwardly on Leonard’s shoulders and he tries to shrug it off because it’s a beautiful day, and Carol just spent the night for the second day in a row, and this is supposed to be good, this is supposed to be happy. 

Leonard peruses his fridge for the appropriate ingredients for pancakes and maybe scrambled eggs, making a note to buy more milk later, because he’s running a little low. He gets the coffee maker started and starts mixing together batter to make pancakes, wondering absently if Carol likes chocolate chips in her pancakes and if he even has any chocolate chips in the apartment. 

“Hey.”

Leonard turns around to find Carol peeking around the corner from the hallway. Her small figure is dwarfed by one of his large t-shirts, and her blonde hair is tousled from sleep. She smiles (almost shy except she’s never shy) and steps into the kitchen, bare feet padding softly across hardwood floors. 

“Hey,” Leonard says, scooping Carol up into a kiss. 

She laughs, standing up on her toes to meet him halfway. Her eyes are bright in the morning light, and Leonard wonders if it’s weird that he thinks he might be a little bit in love with her already after only five weeks of dating. Carol presses a kiss to the tip of his nose and goes to pour herself some coffee before hoisting herself up onto the kitchen counter to watch him cook. Carol chats on about some research she’s been doing for her PhD in applied physics – something theoretical about using the fallout from a nuclear detonation as a catalyst for evolution in barren places – and most of it is far too technical and goes right over his head. She’s gesturing enthusiastically with the hand that isn’t clutching a mug of coffee and she’s so clearly head-over-heels in love with what she’s studying, and Leonard wonders when the last time he found someone so beautiful was. 

He wonders and at the same time, he doesn’t wonder, because deep down he knows, he knows it like it’s etched into his skin. He’s so painfully aware of it, almost every day of his life, and it aches in his chest the way prematurely ended loves always do. 

He’d been young then. There’d been a boy. And back then, Leonard had thought that this boy was where the whole universe started and ended. It’s been years now, and Leonard has run out of room to grieve, but sometimes, he still wonders what his life would’ve been like if he still had that beautiful boy with eyes that smiled like sun-kissed water.

“Leo?” Carol says, and her face is somewhere between exasperated and fond. Leonard blinks. She laughs. “Have you been listening to me at all?”

“Yeah— I, uh— Sorry,” he says, words tumbling out of his mouth unplanned and ungraceful.

Carol’s mouth curves up into a small smile and she points out gently, “Your pancakes are burning.”

Leonard starts and suddenly becomes aware of the burning smell in his nostrils and shouts, “Fuck!” before flailing wildly to scoop the ruined pancake out of the pan. He tosses the pancake into the trash and sighs, scrubbing his face with his hand. 

“ _Sorry_ ,” he says emphatically, trying to somehow convey to her that he’s not actually a huge mess all the time and really, she’s just caught him at a bad time. “I’m just a little distracted today.”

Carol’s expression quickly morphs into one of concern. “Is everything alright?” she asks in that purposeful way of hers that for some reason doesn’t ever feel like prying. “Did something happen?”

Leonard smiles weakly. “It was a long time ago.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” Carol asks. Her eyes are encouraging and open, giving him room to breathe and unfurl without pressing too hard. 

Leonard sighs and slumps into a stool by his kitchen counter. “It’s a long story.”

“Leo,” Carol says in a tone that says _don’t be an idiot_ , making him feel immediately silly for thinking that he’d be wasting her time by talking about such an integral part of his life. 

Leonard hesitates a moment, unsure of where to start. “There was this guy,” he begins, wondering how much is too much to tell her this early on in their relationship. But then words start tumbling out of his mouth, because he hasn’t talked about this to anyone in so long and it’s just _always there_ , and it’s like floodgates opening, letting all the memories burst forth in a sudden lurch. “We met in high school. Junior year, we were in the same honors history class. I’d just moved out here and he’d always fall asleep during lectures and bug me to borrow my notes afterwards. He ended up being one of the best friends I ever had. 

“Spring that year, he asked me to prom. He covered my entire car in sticky notes with the word ‘Prom?’ on them. I think it was a joke to both of us at first, and he made up some excuse of not wanting to go with someone random when he knew that if the two of us went together, we’d have a great time regardless of how awful prom might be. But somewhere down the line, halfway through that summer, it became all too real, and I found myself thinking more often than not that he could be the one.

“We ended up dating for the rest of high school and going to the same college. Senior year, we were living together with a couple other friends in an apartment off campus. A couple of months into the year, he went out with some friends to go to some party. I couldn’t go because I had a test the next day.” Here, Leonard pauses and laughs bitterly. “I remember going to bed early that night because my test was first thing in the morning. And I was woken up at 3am by a phone call from one of the friends he’d gone out with. They’d been in a car accident. The others had gotten off with some broken bones at most, but he’d been driving. He was in ICU. I stayed at the hospital all night.” Leonard’s voice begins to waver like it never dos. “He didn’t make it.”

And it’s been years since that night, but every time he remembers it, he feels the weight of that night on his shoulders all over again. He feels the cold shock of realizing the depth of his loss and the numb isolation of the funeral, the false, cracked smile he’d plastered on his face as he’d accepted condolences from high school and college friends who’d been so sure that if anyone was going to make it, it had to be the two of them. 

Leonard laughs, wincing at how bitter he sounds. “Isn’t this the part where you run off screaming?” he asks, more to fill the space than anything because Carol hasn’t said anything yet, and Leonard is horribly afraid that this is it, that this is the thing that’s going to tip him firmly over to _not worth it_.

He feels Carol’s light hand on his arm. He looks over at her and finds her eyes soft with pain and sympathy. 

“Why would I ever do that?” she says, and her voice is the softest he’s ever heard. She pauses a moment and then asks, “What was his name?”

Leonard draws a shaky breath. “Jim,” he says, his voice breaking around the name. 

“He sounds lovely,” Carol offers, and her eyes are kind and earnest. 

Leonard feels a weight lift from his chest, overwhelming relief that Carol isn’t going to turn and run just yet, that his poor, splintered heart is enough for her, at least for now. 

“Yeah,” Leonard says. “I thought so.”

Carol smiles and leans over to press a soft kiss to his forehead. “Now,” she says, her voice light again, trying to alleviate the pressure in Leonard’s chest. “I was promised breakfast if I stayed the night.”

Leonard lets himself smile at that and turns back to the stove to make a batch of pancakes that hopefully won’t turn out burned this time. He can feel the weight of Carol’s eyes on him, but it’s not judgmental really, just appraising, as if something has shifted, if only just slightly, in the way that she sees him. He feels her fingertips brush over the curve of his shoulder.

“Is he the one who called you Bones?” she asks, fingers tracing over where the loving nickname is inked into his skin. 

“Yeah,” Leonard says quietly. And then he laughs, remembering the first time Jim had explained the reasoning behind the nickname. “He knew that I’ve always wanted to be a doctor.” Leonard pauses and smiles fondly. “You know sawbones is what they used to call doctors back in the day. He said that ‘sawbones’ was pretty lame as a nickname, but ‘Bones’ was completely badass. It kind of stuck.”

Carol laughs, her nose crinkling cutely. “I like your Jim,” she says, slipping off the counter to wrap her arms around Leonard’s waist. 

Leonard smiles softly, leaning down to press to her mouth, and says, “Me too.”


	7. Coffee Shop.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Jim is a rather incompetent barista at a coffee shop Bones frequents.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ah yes, the ubiquitous coffee shop AU. inspired in part by [this tumblr post here](http://leighway.tumblr.com/post/17341329392/i-worked-at-a-bakery-slash-deli-in-santa-monica%20), because chris pine is an idiot and I love him.

Jim is pretty much the worst employee on the face of the planet. It’s not like he actively _tries_ to be a bad employee. He’s just awful at what he’s employed to do. To be fair, it’s tough working in a coffee shop, much tougher than it looks. There’s just so much going on all the time – there’s orders to take and ring up and coffees to make and serve up and sometimes people order _pastries_ too and Jim is just so, so bad at keeping all of that straight in his head, especially worn out after a long day of class. He’d thought this would be a good way to make some extra money while he’s studying at university, but he hadn’t realized that it’d be so much trouble doing this sort of work. 

And of course, because it’s just Jim’s luck, almost every day at around four in the afternoon, this same guy comes in wearing doctor’s scrubs and asks for a large latte. He always looks frazzled and tired, and he’s got this constant furrow in his eyebrows that makes it look like he’s quietly judging everyone around him and it makes Jim all the more frazzled as he’s trying to take care of this guy’s order. If Jim had to guess, he’d say that this guy’s probably a resident at the hospital down the block, judging by how worn out he looks all the time, and all Jim knows about him for sure is that he goes by Leo and he’s got this way of speaking out of the corner of his mouth that draws his words out like honey and makes Jim want to crawl into that voice and live there. 

“Large latte, triple shot.”

Jim jerks his head up at the sound of that familiar voice and immediately kicks himself internally for looking like such an idiot. 

“Leo!” Jim exclaims, trying not to sound too excited and shrill and failing quite miserably. 

Leo makes a sort of surprised face, but looks more amused in the quirk of his mouth than anything else. 

“Um,” Jim says gracefully, wondering why he suddenly regresses to the brain functioning of a middle school kid the instant this guy walks in. Because it’s not like Jim hasn’t run into his fair share of attractive people before. He’s usually so much better at this; in fact, he’s usually quite good at it. 

“Afternoon,” Leo drawls.

“Right,” Jim says and grabs for a cup to scribble Leo’s order on. “Large latte.”

“Triple shot,” Leo reminds him, because he very quickly learned that Jim isn’t capable of remembering the long list of details in a coffee order. Leo eyes Jim’s hands and his eyebrow shoots up to his hairline. “And that’s a medium cup.” 

Jim looks at the cup he’s holding and all but shouts, “Shit! _Sorry_.” He grabs a large cup and scribbles down Leo’s order. “Okay, that’s a large double shot latte.”

“Triple shot,” Leo corrects.

“Right,” Jim says, and he can feel a flush creeping up his neck in embarrassment and _why the hell can’t he ever just get it together?_ He sets the cup aside and clears his throat, hoping he seems like he’s got an ounce of composure in him, “Anything else?”

“Blueberry scone,” Leo says, glancing down at his phone. 

“Toasted?” Jim asks, already moving to get Leo his pastry. 

“Of course,” he says, lifting his eyes to meet Jim’s. The corner of his mouth lifts just a touch and Jim’s chest clenches. 

Jim nods and sticks the scone into the toaster and goes to ring up Leo’s order. He punches in the numbers with fingers that won’t quite listen to him and when he reads out the total, Leo gives him a look that’s halfway between exasperated and something strangely close to fond. 

“That’s three dollars too few,” Leo reminds him, as usual, because Jim is shit at tallying up totals, even though Leo orders the same thing every day and all Jim has to do is punch some numbers into a machine that’ll total up everything for him. 

“Right, yes, sorry,” Jim says and takes Leo’s cash, exact change as always, and Leo stuffs a couple bills into the tips jar and gives Jim the slightest hint of a smile before stepping off to the side to wait for his order.

Really, it’s a miracle that Leo doesn’t absolutely _hate_ him by now, because of course every time he comes in, it’s Jim’s shift, which means that every time Leo comes in, probably already exhausted from having to deal with people for god knows how long (and Jim feels especially bad on the days when it looks like Leo hasn’t slept in almost a day), but Leo never fusses, besides the occasional grumbling that Jim thinks is less directed specifically at him but rather at the world in general. And really, if it weren’t for the fact that Leo probably thinks that Jim is a complete idiot for messing up his orders all the time even though he orders _the same fucking thing every day_ , Jim probably would’ve tried to make a move already. 

“He’s cute,” Gaila says, popping out of nowhere to lean on the counter next to Jim. 

Jim jumps and makes the most undignified of squeaks. Gaila laughs. 

“I’m serious,” she says. “And he clearly likes you, or else he’d have bitten your head off already for being so incompetent.” Jim opens his mouth to protest, but Gaila holds her hand up to stop him, “Listen Jim, just give him your number or something. Because if you’re not going to hit that, I will, and you know I’m not going to be shy about it.” 

Jim’s mouth falls open and he sputters, “You can’t just— People don’t— I can’t just write my number on his coffee and be all ‘hey, I know I screw up everything all the time, but call me!’”

Gaila smirks at him. “Sure you can,” she says and skips off to the back, where the oven alarms are signaling that a new batch of pastries is ready to be taken out and cooled. 

Jim frowns as he makes Leo’s drink, thinking about what Gaila said. He can’t just do that right? Writing your number on coffee cups for customers is something you can only get away with in movies, and even then, only if you’re smooth and have your shit together and don’t accidentally make the wrong order for every other customer. He sighs as he pours the steamed milk into Leo’s coffee. Maybe Gaila could get away with something so cliché; at least she’s good at flirting and interacting with attractive people and actually doing her job right. 

Jim is jolted out of his thoughts when he overhears another customer whispering, “Do you smell something burning?”

And it’s then that Jim remembers that Leo had ordered a scone and he’s left it in the little toaster oven for far too long, and he frantically rushes to pull the scone out of the toaster only to find it blackened and emitting generous curls of smoke. 

“ _Fuck!_ ” Jim shouts as he tosses the scone away and tries to wave away the burning smell.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Gaila swoop in and grab the coffee he made, fresh scone in hand, cleaning up his messes as usual. She scribbles something on one of the paper pastry bags and slips the scone in before calling out, “Order for Leo.”

He thanks her as he gets his coffee and frowns slightly when he sees that she’s written something on the pastry bag. 

“You have a nice day,” Gaila says, a little too sweet, and goes to man the register since Jim is dealing with the toaster. 

“What did you do?” Jim hisses at her as she walks by. 

Gaila’s eyes go wide in the least convincing imitation of an innocent expression he has ever seen. “Nothing,” she insists. 

Jim looks desperately over at Leo, suddenly fearful that Gaila followed through on her threat and is actually going to try to seduce _his_ favorite customer. But Leo’s eyebrows raise and he lifts his eyes to meet Jim’s before honest to god _smiling_ and turning to walk out of the coffee shop, and oh god, Jim feels like he could _die_. Jim’s heart slams in his chest and he has no idea what he’s supposed to do now and if this is a good sign and _what the hell did Gaila write anyways?_   
Jim’s worries are almost immediately answered a couple minutes later when his phone goes off and he looks only to see that he’s gotten a text from an unknown number. 

_The feeling is mutual. –L_

“Oh my god,” Jim says without even realizing he’s speaking aloud. He jerks his head up and screeches, “Gaila! _What did you do?_ ”

Gaila grins at him like she’s just won the lottery and winks. “You’re welcome.”


	8. Airport.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Jim and Bones are both stuck in the same airport at two in the morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know, I know. I _suck_. I'm actually the worst at updating on a regular basis. I don't even have any excuses. I just haven't been writing as much lately, which sucks, and this is such a short update, but hopefully this turned out okay and y'all don't hate me?

Leonard is _tired_. Leonard is so tired that his eyes hurt and his body is sore all over and the edges of his vision are starting to wobble. He was supposed to leave for Georgia seven hours ago, for home, to his comfortable full sized bed, to his mother who’d smile at him with the broken eyes of a woman who constantly sees too much of her dead husband in her son, to his grandparents who try to feed him too much food every time they see him. His past week has been all kinds of exhausting and stressful, filled with the kind of cramming and finals only medical school can offer, and this is the last thing he needs. 

The thing is, he’s not even sure why his flight has been delayed so much anymore. Seven hours ago, the plane was late arriving, which okay, yes, that happens. And that should have been that, but then, they announced that there were technical difficulties with the plane, and Leonard had promptly freaked out and demanded to be put on a different flight because he’s already afraid enough of flying; he isn’t about to get on a plane that might stop working midflight. But he’d been told that all of the flights have been booked full – it is the holiday season after all, and everyone is rushing to get home before Christmas – and he’s been stuck here at his gate ever since. Leonard sighs and closes his eyes, letting the voices of too many people too far from where they’re supposed to be wash over him. He hopes that he’ll at least be able to get a nap in if he can’t leave any time soon. 

“Is anyone sitting here?” 

Leonard blinks his eyes open, eyelids heavy already, wanting to sleep but unable to find it. 

A guy with messy, dirty blonde hair wearing a Cal sweatshirt is looking over his glasses at Leonard and nods towards the empty seat next to him. Leonard nods and shifts in his seat to make a little more space. The guy smiles gratefully and sinks into the seat.

“Thanks,” the guy says. “I left for literally two minutes and someone took my seat.”

All Leonard can offer is a tired half smile that probably looks too upset to be very friendly. The guy seems unfazed and continues grinning anyways. 

“I’m Jim, by the way,” the guy says, holding his hand out for Leonard to shake. 

“Leo.”

Jim nods and leans back in his chair. “So, where you headed?”

“Georgia,” Leonard says, rubbing at his tired eyes. 

“Home?” Jim asks. Leonard nods, and Jim laughs. “Me too. I’ve got a flight that connects through Chicago, but of course they’re having the biggest snow storm of the year, so I’m stuck here till that clears up.”

Leonard tries to offer up a sympathetic smile, but he can feel it in the awkward twist of his mouth that he probably comes off looking more pissed off than anything. It’s just that he’s so, so _tired_ and he misses home and he hates making small talk, and really, it’s not Jim’s fault, not any of it, but he just keeps talking, and Leonard would rather not have to interact with people right now. 

Jim sighs. “Not sure if I want to be going home,” he says, sliding down into his chair and letting his head fall back on the backrest. He frowns up at the ceiling in the contemplative way people get when it’s two in the morning and there’s nothing else to do but pour their hearts out to strangers. “There’s nothing really there for me, you know? I dragged myself all the way out here because someone thought I could make something of myself. I almost don’t want to go back.”

Leonard shrugs, his mouth twisting around the familiarity of that feeling that Jim is describing, remembering the first winter he came back home from medical school and how the loose ends of the life he’d left behind suddenly rattled around him like loose change. He remembers walking back into his childhood room and wondering where he now fit amongst all of the debris of his old life. He remembers turning every corner and forgetting for a split second that his father had died over the summer and expecting him to be there with a laugh and a clap on the shoulder like he had been when Leonard was still in college. 

“You get to see your parents at least,” Leonard says, because he can’t think of anything better to say. 

Jim cracks a smile at that. “Yeah,” he muses. “My mom’s probably the only good thing waiting for me in the entire state of Iowa.”

Leonard catches himself before he lets himself ask about Jim’s father, because he shouldn’t, he has no right, he’s only just met Jim, but there’s something about sharing the same loss with someone (or thinking that he shares the same loss with someone) that makes him feel like he’s known Jim his whole life. 

Instead Leonard just laughs wearily and says, “Yeah, I know that feeling.”

Jim grins and they sit in comfortable silence for a moment, as comfortable as if they actually have known each other for years, as if this is a natural resting place between the two of them. Then, Jim turns is head and gives Leonard a curious look.

“Do you go to Cal?” he asks.

Leonard shakes his head. “UCSF.”

Jim’s eyes pull wide into an impressed expression, and he makes a soft humming sound. “Why go so far from home?” he asks, and he sounds like he’s searching for something Leonard can’t quite name, something that sounds sort of like a reason to be. “Why not go to med school somewhere closer?”

Leonard shrugs and stares out the window at the dark sky, wondering if maybe the late hour is what’s making him feel so much like he should be too honest with someone he doesn’t know at all. He decides not to tell this guy that the real reason he chose to come here instead of staying in Georgia had more to do with the fact that being home reminded him too much about a girl who didn’t love him enough (at all) and a father whose ghost was still haunting every corner of his life than anything else. 

“I just wanted something new,” Leonard settles on saying, because a half truth is better than no truth at all. 

Jim chuckles, and it’s too knowing, too familiar, and it should bother Leonard that he’s suddenly so comfortable around this guy, but it doesn’t, even though Leonard, as a general rule, doesn’t like people at all when he’s this tired. And yet, hours later, when he finally, finally makes it home and he’s in bed, letting the tiredness wash over him in waves, Leonard finds himself wondering who Jim is and why he’s so fascinated by him and why he feels like he’d like to see Jim again after sharing a thirty minute conversation with him at two in the morning. And maybe it’s just the sleep deprivation talking, but somehow, Leonard almost feels like they could’ve been friends and regrets not asking for Jim’s number, because he suddenly feels like, irrationally, finding him again, finding that quiet comfort that he hasn’t had in so long. But it’s dumb and Leonard barely remembers thinking it when he wakes up, and he’ll probably never see Jim again anyways.


End file.
